I Ordered the Camera

So far, there's $18 in the Camera Fund. If I can figure out how to do one of those meters on the blog homepage, I'll post my progress. It'll be hilarious.

I ordered the camera and it should be here tomorrow. I can't tell you how often during the day I've tried to reach for my camera and remembered that it isn't working. I feel really weird knowing I've gotten so dependent on it for documenting my life.

Like, just now I went up to the girls' school and helped with a project where the kids were writing about their families in Jane's first grade class. I would love to show you some pictures because the kids were so earnest and cute. They were truly trying to capture what family life was like for them. Jane had written, "My mom is savable and crafty." I think she meant that I save things and I like to do crafts but I'm glad to hear I'm savable. I've been worried.

The other thing that occured to me after reading Ann's comment yesterday is that I CAN still be working, even if I'm not getting paid for it, with an eye on getting paid in the future. I'm sitting on about half of a comic novel that I've worked on sporadically since 2003. I still like it but I never make time to work on it because I was um, well, working there for a while and the rest of the time, I found other excuses. I was thinking about publishing it chapter by chapter on a new blog, which would make me work on it and would give me feedback on whether or not it's any good. Say I publish a chapter every few weeks or so... well, we'll see how it goes. I might publish the first few chapters pretty soon to see if anyone even WANTS to read more... Anyway, the novel is called "Making Roux" and you can find the first chapter of it on a new blog by the same name, Making Roux.

I'm not sure what I'm doing or if this is a wise thing to do at all but it might be entertaining! We'll just break all kinds of new ground together!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Yea!! for ordering the camera. Retroactive saving is my favorite kind...
On my way over to Roux right now...
hokgardner said…
I'll check out the new site soon. I'm fighting a migraine and three kids, one of whom had shots today and is miserable.
I've read somewhere and an editor also told me that something published on a blog is, well, published; most editors won't buy first rights if something has been published already. You might want to check that out before you put any of your book on the blog.
Barb Matijevich said…
Yes, it's definitely a truism in the publishing world. But having a following MIGHT get you a publisher who is interested in your other work, or an agent who would be willing to represent you. At the very least, it's a good chance for me to hone my writing chops and build my confidence. My friend Tiffany, who is my writing mentor, is really after me to start submitting smaller pieces to publications in order to show a strong publication portfolio to prospective publishers. (Whew, there were a lot of "p's" in that sentence!) I'm not sure what's stopping me from doing that. But doing this BOOK is really exciting so I'm sort of following my own whim on this one.

And maybe it's crap and no one will want to read it. I suspect it might be too similar to all the other "chick lit" stuff that's out there. I don't know.

I guess I don't know much. But it wasn't doing anyone any good sitting on my hard drive and now I've dusted it off and I'm excited about it again... maybe something good will come of that. Maybe it'll just give a reader a smile. Maybe it'll be wildly popular and I'll sell advertising on the site.

Am I making any sense or do I sound like a woman whose brain has been eaten by very large antibiotics?